The bassin of the Guadalquivir river has played an important role in the occidental civilisation. References in the ancient Greek authors to the kingdom of Tartessos, perhaps the heir of the mythic Platon's Atlantida, is a proof of the existence of an advanced human society in the Guadaquivir's estuary several centuries before the coming of the Phoenician ships to the Iberian peninsula. Once the Roman empire got these temperate occidental lands, great cities like Emerita Augusta and Hispalis (the present cities of Mérida and Sevilla) developed quickly in the Roman province of the Baetica, which taken its name from the Latin name of the Guadalquivir (the Baetis river).

The city of Corduba was one of the advanced Roman cities that rose in the fertile lands of the Guadalqivir river bassin, and some of its sons, like the great philosopher Lutius Seneca, testify the relevance of Corduba in the Roman imperial world. The Roman bridge that gives access to the city from the left side of the river, which has been the only one until very recently, is a remain of the ancient glories of Corduba that has come almost intact to our present times.

But the best times of Corduba were still to come up when the Roman empire dissapeared. At the beginning of the VIII century, an army of several thousands of North African warriors crossed the strait of Gibraltar and invaded the Iberian peninsule. Some years later, a second army of Arab warriors, commanded by members of the Omeyan tribe, came on place. The Omeyans established his headquarters in the former Roman city of Corduba, giving rise to the beginning of an exciting history.

The Omeyan kingdom of Córdoba was an emirate dependent of the caliph of Damasque for two centuries, but a storm shocked the Muslim world in the X century. The Fatimi tribe challenged the power of Damasque and declared an independent caliphate in the Magreb, and this change threatened the interests of the Omeyan emirate, leading the king Abd-al-Rahman III to respond to the challenge. Abd-al-Rahman was proclaimed Caliph and Prince of Belevers, giving rise to the birth of the Caliphate of Córdoba, the single independent Muslim caliphate in the history of Europe.

The caliphal dream of the Omeyans was a short dream, but wrote one of the best pages of the European history. For almost one century, the city of Córdoba, as the city capital of the kingdom known as Al-Andalus, became the main city of Europe and one of the main cities in the world. By mixing elements of the ancient Roman-Hispanic culture with the Arab and Jew traditions, Al-Andalus developed a culture that must be qualified as the most sophisticated and advanced of the beginning of the second millenium, and some magnificient remains of that culture, as the amazing caliphal mosque of Córdoba and the ruins of the city of Madinat al-Zahra, have come to our hands.

A visit to Córdoba can be completed in just two days, but we recommend a stay of four days to enjoy it better. Further to the mandatory visits to the mosque, the ruins of Madinat al-Zahra, and the Alcázar of the Christian Kings, the city offers many other things to the visitor, and the best could be just walking by the narrow streets of the old Jew district, traying to hear the sounds coming from the past. Córdoba is placed close to the city of Sevilla, and both cities are connected between them, and with Madrid, by an excellent high-speed train line, so that combination of both cities in a single trip is a good option.